Local media and CNN are reporting that Horry County South Carolina's ES&S touch-screen voting machines are in a near total meltdown.

CNN reports:

Poll workers in Horry County tell CNN voting machines have been down since polls opened Saturday morning throughout the county — the machines are not reading an activation card.

Workers have been giving out paper ballots but at least one precinct has run out of envelopes to seal them in (not a sign of turnout — they had just 23 such ballots on hand). Election workers say that officials have told them they are working precinct by precinct to fix the problem and that a few voting machines may now be running, but some voters have been turned away and asked to check back later.

Three poll workers also tell CNN the county has about 100 precincts and all have been affected. CNN is awaiting a call back from the county's election supervisor.

Malfunctioning voting machines plagued Horry County, which contains the cities of Myrtle Beach and North Myrtle Beach, according to poll workers. Workers said the machines have been down since polls opened at 7 a.m., and they are not reading activation cards.

Workers were handing out paper ballots, but at least one precinct has run out --- it had only 23 on hand. Poll workers said the county has about 100 precincts, and all of them are affected.

This is happening in a state where election officials were recently asked about their paperless ES&S iVotronic touch-screen (DRE) voting system and the fact that other states have found the machines to be insecure, poorly designed, inaccurate, and not accessible for voters with disabilities. These officials have all said that they anticipated a smooth voting process for both the Republican presidential preference primary on Jan. 19 and the Democratic primary on Jan. 26 in South Carolina....

Prior to the reports of the mass failure of their voting machines, Horry County had released their plan on how they were going to conduct two primary elections on two straight Saturdays.

Late in the week poll workers picked up the iVotronic machines that they are using today. They took them home on voting machine "sleepovers" and then set up the poll sites for today's primary.

Today only the Republicans are voting.

When the polls close this evening all memory cards, machines, and supplies will be returned to the county election office.

The tallies will be done and the results reported. The machines will then be prepared to be picked up next Thursday by the same poll workers who will take them home and repeat the "sleepover" process for the Democratic primary next Saturday.

This plan seems to be a welcome mat for security problems, since the machines are highly susceptible to tampering, and even short periods outside the view of the public and election officials can be a recipe for disaster. Also in question is whether memory cards will be saved between the two primaries, as per federal law. This Train Wreck will probably throw a locomotive wheel into the counties' plans.

This article will be updated as more news comes in...

Update: Noon Pacific: While Donna Mahn, Georgetown County's elections director, said, ".....before the iVotronic machines go out to precincts, they must be tested and calibrated by elections staff members. The state provides a set of rules for testing," and Mahn said, "everyone is careful to follow those to the letter."

Apparently Ms. Mahn misspoke because Chris Whitmire, public information officer for the State Election Commission has made the following statement to explain the problem:

Whitmire said the problem came when election officials, who test the machines by placing dummy votes and checking that they are recorded, forgot to complete the last step of the test in some cases. That last step clears the machines in preparation for actual voting.

And what do the voters have to say about the situation? While county officials are minimizing the impact of the meltdown by telling the media that no one was sent home without voting and there were paper ballots available, the voters were telling a different story:

In an email to News13, Steve Rabe wrote, “This is not true. Everyone is being turned away. There are no paper ballots. We were just turned away along with many of our neighbors. We were told the only place we could vote was in Conway. They did not know if they would get ballots later today. We were told to check back later…in the rain. This is a crisis.”

Tom Reynolds wrote, “I voted by paper ballot at the Socastee library and saw them run out of those while I was there at 10am. I went to the Forestbrook precinct with a neighbor, picked up some paper ballots there and took them to the Socastee library. They told me they had 'turned away' 20 voters in the time I was gone! Turned away?! That's not supposed to happen according to the Horry county elections commission. They said they are supposed to send them to another precinct.”

Update: 1:15PM Pac.: The McCain campaign has now announced that they will ask for the polls in Horry County to stay open an extra-hour beyond the scheduled 7PM EST closing. However, a circuit court judge has to issue the order and it is Saturday.

Update: 3:15PM Pac.:It appears that the CNN source for the story about McCain's campaign wanting to hold the polls open an extra hour may have been jumping the gun. Later news reports are that McCain's handlers are behind closed doors trying to decide what to do.

It is also being reported that voters in polling places all over the county used scraps of paper, note book paper, and even paper towels would be accepted as a ballot. The county is expecting to hand count over 1,500 pieces of paper tonight.

Well at least cnn's covering it. Thank you John. You know what my worst fear is? Nothing comprehensive will by done about electronic voting systems by the presidential election and when they melt down it'll be idiot boy's excuse to declare martial law!

Great that the mainstream media is finally reporting this stuff. I believe we will turn the tide on this Rovian disaster and our time will be looked back at as a dark time in American political history. Thanks for the great work.

Hey, put NPR in there with WMUR. About 45 minutes ago, I was listening to news on NPR and they were talking about the primaries in South Carolina but no mention of whether the participants got to vote.

Hey is there any way to get the ACLU or someone to sue the FCC for allowing the major networks to not cover this most critical issue to democracy? I mean hey, they are suppose to use those public airwaves for our best interest aren't they?

Meanwhile McCain's campaign team complained this afternoon they heard reports of voting problems in Horry County, near Myrtle Beach, S.C.

McCain's state press spokesperson B.J. Boling said she heard that some of the electronic voting machines in the county malfunctioned and that polling sites were running out of paper ballots.

"We've heard reports of people literally casting ballots on scraps of paper," she told ABC News' Ron Claiborne. "We are encouraging people to try again. The county says it is trying to reset machines and get as many paper ballots out as they can."

Chris Whitmire confirmed that a number of voting machines in a number of precincts in Horry County had difficulty this morning from human error in preparing the voting machines for the election, reports ABC News' Tahman Bradley.

I'm reproducing this here, because now is the time. As the feel good stories come up, challenge them! Ask them for their supporting facts and research.

The mess in SC right now, prompted this comment. In 2004, I challenged a story, then published by WIS TV. They changed a headline from "machines worked perfectly", to "machines worked as designed".

Enough of these and producers will take note. Some of the commentary is dated, given where we are today, but the idea is unchanged. Challenge election feel good stories. All of them! Each reader here on Brad Blog can do this and spread the word for others to do it.

All it takes is some fact prep, know it cold, then ask question after question of story authors and producers. Over and over. They will respond to those, and that's where we get a chance to do some advocacy.

That's it everybody. Just didn't know where else to put this!

Dealing with Voting Machine Ignorance, One media person at a time

by DOUG DINGUS

{Ed Note: Well Doug, how about giving us a link instead? And please read the rules for commenting. Thank you. --99}

* This paper, originally published on OpEdNews.com, is reproduced here, with only a minor edit, for later reference.

this is probably a good thing that it happened with a GOP election. They will be p*ssed off and complain about it and the state will pay attention. As to whether they will pay attention to see what they should oo based on who is doing well in Nov is another story.

Did you miss the really big news that came out about South Carolina last week? It was mentioned on the Voice of the Voters radio show. You know, that news that could end secret vote counting in America if some Presidential candidate wanted to take action to enforce the fundamental right to know that our votes are counted.

Article II, § 1 of the Constitution of South Carolina states, “the ballots shall not be counted in secret.” Computers count inside their case, with no oversight, just like they are told to do, unless of course, they malfunction or are hacked.

Computers count votes in secret. No one can see a computer count, and therefore, using computers to count votes in secret violates South Carolina’s Constitution!

This is the election integrity jackpot, a Constitutional provision prohibiting counting votes in secret! No more need to refer to case law, evidence, or logic to argue against secret vote counting, at least in South Carolina.

Senator Edwards, you have courageously spoken out against touch screen voting. Will you take action to require South Carolina to follow the law? How about another Presidential candidate?

I voted today in Columbia SC on one of these Ivotronic machines. They are terribly confusing. I am not sure if I cast my vote or not. There was no way to assure me.
The screen makes you confirm your choice but after you press vote, you get NO CONFIRMATION>
BAD MACHINES> POORLY SPENT MONEY

This has more to do with NH than SC, so I hope it is appropriate enough to put it here. This is from the Book VOTESCAM, which you can read parts of online. I was thinking about the "secure" ballots in NH.
"A woman in her sixties examined a security box brought in by a precinct captain.

'Your seal is broken,' she said.

'Yes, I know,'the precinct captain replied.

Ken focused on the male clerk who had brought the seals in the paper sack.

'What are the extra seals for?' Ken asked.

'These?'

'Yes. Those.'

'Oh, they're just in case any come in broken or something.'He shuffled them lightly about with his fingers."

Ya know, I went down to the evoting hearing in dc a couple of years ago and saw Professor Felton flip the vote in under 30 seconds with my own two eyes! I say the new Holt bill should be madatory not a choice and STRICT chain of custody should be added also. Then make the networks report the true status of vote counting in this country. Lets see how us dumb americans act then!

While the crooks who cooked up HAVA (Bob Ney & Jack Abramoff) are sitting in jail, their work for the "permanent republican majority" is rippling throughout the country! Every time something like this is reported in the corporopress, it is dismissed as a "glitch", a rarity, a non-event that "a few voters" were affected.

I never thought I'd hear about voting machine sleep-overs again after the fiasco in the Bilbray-Busby district, but here it is again! And voters casting votes on "scraps of paper"? What, did they think that those would count? That they were "provisional" ballots? I agree with Steve Talbert @#12 "this is probably a good thing that it happened with a GOP election" because it should open some eyes on the Right to just how bad these machines are and therefore how fragile our hold is on our democratic republic.

John Gideon aptly points out (worth repeating here) "Also in question is whether memory cards will be saved between the two primaries, as per federal law." Will the "memory" cards be "initialized" again for the Dem primary, with a bunch of GOP tallies still on them? Or are they using separate "memory" cards?

If what was done to those WH e-mails that undoubtedly would have implicated Rove, Cheney et al in Plamegate and in the U.S. attorney firings is any indication of what is happening/has happened/will happen to this election's memory cards ... well, you can just kiss those little pieces of technology good-bye.

"Every time something like this is reported in the corporopress, it is dismissed as a "glitch", a rarity, a non-event that "a few voters" were affected."

This is why the stories should be challenged! When fluff stuff like that is published, particularly online, mailing the author / producer, with simple questions like, "If this is just a glitch, why did California de-certify those same machines in use in South Carolina?"

"Cite your source for facts that show these machines are operating in a manner that is trustworthy, and in line with state law."

"Did you know it is not legal in South Carolina for the votes to be counted in secret?" (see comment above for that source)

Ask a direct question, professionaly, and when the answer is given (if it's given), you have a one shot conversation --a chance for advocacy.

The conversation has moved to the point where "bad voting machines" can now be reported. This is a good thing, and needs to be leveraged.

Voters/Citizens still don't know there's any problem, we hear a bunch of "feel good" speech segments/rolls by the "top candidates."
No worthy substance, or relevance. They press upon the public this is important, yet fail to realize the importance of electronic vote tabulation device failures themselves.

Look the stage has been set,Clinton will somehow win with the help of the machines & the "Establishment" & we will see no change in this country.The only way for the progressive movement to come forth atop is for the Repukes to again have the prezidency & keep running our country it into the Dump like it's going.Once the vile of the citizenry is awaken then & only then can the progressive agenda come atop once more.HClinton will certainly not bring it forth.But what is shocking is to see poor folks who have had their jobs out-sourced & the women whose families have been squeezed by the outsourcing lining up to support the Clintons.It's exactly why we are going under.

".... Horry County South Carolina's ES&S touch-screen voting machines are in a near total meltdown."

Excuse me ! They didn't finish turning the machines on !!! And yet here comes the black helicopters. They didn't push the reset button. It's in the manual. In fact it's likely on a label on the bloody machine.

Everyone is so spooked about this that we forget that the best, easiest way to steel a vote count is to re-count paper ballots.

Paper ballots are the only honest method for casting honorable votes. COMPUTER VOTING IS WORSE THAN SENDING BLANK CHECKS THROUGH THE MAIL! How many more electronic fiascos are needed to give a thumbs down on computers, after all the facts they have so often faked our sacred votes?

Maybe this should be titled “An Unconstitutional Train Wreck in South Carolina.”

In response to HAVA requirements the Republican Governor of the state appointed a State Election Commission to select the voting system to be used in the state. There are supposed to be representatives of both parties on this commission but nobody seems to know who could be representing the Democratic Party on this commission. Although the South Carolina State Constitution states that the ballots must not be counted in Secret this commission selected the secret counting of DRE’s as the vote “counting method for the entire state. Therefore a full 100 percent of votes now being ”counted” in South Carolina elections are now being “counted” Unconstitutionally!